Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 28, 2012

Warrantless ?drug sweeps? in government-run schools have become routine in recent years. So have ?lock-down? drills in which SWAT teams conduct training exercises involving hostage or terrorism scenarios. In some lock-down drills, students have been kept in the dark about the fact that the incident is a training exercise, rather than a genuine crisis.

Vista Grande High School in Casa Grande, Arizona, held a lock-down drug sweep on October 31. Students were confined to their classrooms, then led in small groups to another room where they were forced to line up against a wall and be searched with the help of drug-sniffing dogs. This exercise introduced a new element: Among the four law enforcement agencies involved in the search was a group of prison guards employed by the Corrections Corporation of America, the nation?s largest for-profit prison contractor.

Notes Caroline Isaacs of the Tucson office of the American Friends Service Committee: ?To invite for-profit prison guards to conduct law enforcement actions in a high school is perhaps the most direct expression of the `schools-to-prison pipeline? I?ve ever seen.? Clearly, the similarities between government-run schools and prisons are not limited to architecture ? and the differences separating them are increasingly difficult to identify.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.